Уилки Коллинз - Hide and Seek

Just at that moment Mr. Blyth opened the door. Feeling the slight shock, as he let it bang to after entering, Madonna instantly started up and ran to the fireplace. Valentine did not notice her when he came in.

He bustled about the neighborhood of the Dying Gladiator, talking incessantly, arranging his port-crayons by the drawing-boards, and trimming the lamps that lit the model. Mrs. Blyth cast many an anxious look towards the fireplace. After the lapse of a few minutes Madonna turned round and came back to the couch. The traces of tears had almost entirely disappeared from her face. She made a little appealing gesture that asked Mrs. Blyth to be silent about what had happened while they were alone; kissed, as a sign that she wished to be forgiven, the hand that was held out to her; and then sat down quietly again in her accustomed place.

At the same moment a voice was heard talking and laughing boisterously in the hall. Then followed a long whispering, succeeded by a burst of giggling from the housemaid, who presently ascended to Mrs. Blyth’s room alone, and entered—after an explosion of suppressed laughter behind the door—holding out at arm’s length a pair of boxing-gloves.

“If you please, sir,” said the girl, addressing Valentine, and tittering hysterically at every third word, “Master Zack’s down stairs on the landing, and he says you’re to be so kind as put on these things (he’s putting another pair on hisself) and give him the pleasure of your company for a few minutes in the painting-room.”

“Come on, Blyth,” cried the voice from the stairs. “I told you I should bring the gloves, and make a fighting man of you, last time I was here, you know. Come on! I only want to open your chest by knocking you about a little in the painting-room before we begin to draw.”

The servant still held the gloves away from her at the full stretch of her arm, as if she feared they were yet alive with the pugilistic energies that had been imparted to them by their last wearer. Mrs. Blyth burst out laughing, Valentine followed her example. The housemaid began to look bewildered, and begged to know if her master would be so kind as to take “the things” away from her.

“Did you say, come up stairs?” continued the voice outside. “All right; I have no objection, if Mrs. Blyth hasn’t.” Here Zack came in with his boxing-gloves fitted on. “How are you, Blyth? These are the pills for that sluggish old liver of yours that you’re always complaining of. Put ‘em on. Stand with your left leg forward—keep your right leg easily bent—and fix your eye on me!”

“Hold your tongue!” cried Mr. Blyth, at last recovering breath enough to assert his dignity as master of the new drawing-school. “Take off those things directly! What do you mean, sir, by coming into my academy, which is devoted to the peaceful arts, in the attitude of a prize-fighter?”

“Don’t lose your temper, my dear fellow,” rejoined Zack; “you will never learn to use your fists prettily if you do. Here, Patty, the boxing lesson’s put off till to-morrow. Take the gloves up-stairs into your master’s dressing-room, and put them in the drawer where his clean shirts are, because they must be kept nice and dry. Shake hands, Mrs. Blyth: it does one good to see you laugh like that, you look so much the better for it. And how is Madonna? I’m afraid she’s been sitting before the fire, and trying to spoil her pretty complexion. Why, what’s the matter with her? Poor little darling, her hands are quite cold!”

“Come to your lesson, sir, directly,” said Valentine, assuming his most despotic voice, and leading the disorderly student by the collar to his appointed place.

“Hullo!” cried Zack, looking at the Dying Gladiator. “The gentleman in plaster’s making a face—I’m afraid he isn’t quite well. I say, Blyth, is that the statue of an ancient Greek patient, suffering under the prescription of an ancient Greek physician?”

“Will you hold your tongue and take up your drawing-board?” cried Mr. Blyth. “You young barbarian, you deserve to be expelled my academy for talking in that way of the Dying Gladiator. Now then; where’s Madonna? No! stop where you are, Zack. I’ll show her her place, and give her the drawing-board. Wait a minute, Lavvie! Let me prop you up comfortably with the pillows before you begin. There! I never saw a more beautiful effect of light and shade, my dear, than there is on your view of the model. Has everybody got a port-crayon and two bits of chalk? Yes, everybody has. Order! order! order!” shouted Valentine, suddenly forgetting his assumed dignity in the exultation of the moment. “Mr. Blyth’s drawing academy for the promotion of family Art is now open, and ready for general inspection. Hooray!”

“Hooray!” echoed Zack, “hooray for family Art! I say, Blyth, which chalk do I begin with—the white or the black? The black—eh? Do I start with the what’s his name’s wry face? and if so, where am I to begin? With his eyes, or his nose, or his mouth, or the top of his head, or the bottom of his chin—or what?”

“First sketch in the general form with a light and flowing stroke, and without attention to details,” said Mr. Blyth, illustrating these directions by waving his hand gracefully about his own person. “Then measure with the eye, assisted occasionally by the port-crayon, the proportion of the parts. Then put dots on the paper; a dot where his head comes; another dot where his elbows and knees come, and so forth. Then strike it all in boldly—it’s impossible to give you better advice than that—strike it in, Zack; strike it in boldly!”

“Here goes at his head and shoulders to begin with,” said Zack, taking one comprehensive and confident look at the Dying Gladiator, and drawing a huge half circle, with a preliminary flourish of his hand on the paper. “Oh, confound it, I’ve broken the chalk!”

“Of course you have,” retorted Valentine. “Take another bit; the Academy grants supplementary chalk to ignorant students, who dig their lines on the paper, instead of drawing them. Now, break off a bit of that bread-crumb, and rub out what you have done. ‘Buy a penny loaf, and rub it all out,’ as Mr. Fuseli once said to me in the Schools of the Royal Academy, when I showed him my first drawing, and was excessively conceited about it.”

“I remember,” said Mrs. Blyth, “when my father was working at his great engraving, from Mr. Scumble’s picture of the ‘Fair Gleaner Surprised,’ that he used often to say how much harder his art was than drawing, because you couldn’t rub out a false line on copper, like you could on paper. We all thought he never would get that print done, he used to groan over it so in the front drawing-room, where he was then at work. And the publishers paid him infamously, all in bills, which he had to get discounted; and the people who gave him the money cheated him. My mother said it served him right for being always so imprudent; which I thought very hard on him, and I took his part—so harassed too as he was by the tradespeople at that time.”

“I can feel for him, my love,” said Valentine, pointing a piece of chalk for Zack. “The tradespeople have harassed me —not because I could not pay them certainly, but because I could not add up their bills. Never owe any man enough, Zack, to give him the chance of punishing you for being in his debt, with a sum to do in simple addition. At the time when I had bills (go on with your drawing; you can listen, and draw too), I used, of course, to think it necessary to check the tradespeople, and see that their Total was right. You will hardly believe me, but I don’t remember ever making the sum what the shop made it, on more than about three occasions. And, what was worse, if I tried a second time, I could not even get it to agree with what I had made it myself the first time. Thank Heaven, I’ve no difficulties of that sort to grapple with now! Everything’s paid for the moment it comes in. If the butcher hands a leg of mutton to the cook over the airey railings, the cook hands him back six and nine—or whatever it is—and takes his bill and receipt. I eat my dinners now, with the blessed conviction that they won’t all disagree with me in an arithmetical point of view at the end of the year. What are you stopping and scratching your head for in that way?”